This will be a regular feature where I will share links to blogs I have read during the week. I may not agree with everything the writer has to say but these stand out because they gave me something to think about. (These may contain content or even ideas that might offend some. Don’t say you weren’t warned).
“There are millions of Americans who don’t understand why anyone might worry about the effects of this election. They see it as “feelings” versus their own real concerns. Those of us on the other side need to be clear that Mr. Trump’s callous disregard for people outside his demographic is intolerable, and will be destructive to the entire nation.
If I had not changed, I would have been jubilant after this election and more certain than ever that anxiety from a shrinking white majority would result in the election of more people who tap into this simple narrative. Now I’m convinced this doesn’t have to be our destiny. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left-white-nationalism.html?_r=1
“I’m just not in communion with people who ridicule “safe space” and want a hard and austere gospel to feel awesome about. So I don’t know what that makes me. But I’m with the people making sanctuary….
If we have pristine doctrine and we’re sanctimonious douche bags, then our doctrine has failed us. Jesus’ cross and resurrection will always be the core of my spiritual identity, but if I have to choose between agnostic queer kids and “Suck it up, buttercup” Christians, then I’m with the people making sanctuary.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mercynotsacrifice/2016/11/20/im-with-the-people-making-sanctuary/
“…I think it reveals a lot about American Evangelical culture. Might makes right. You worship God because he’s the big bad power who could torture you if you didn’t. You worship God because he’s the big bad power who’s choosing not to torture you, and how incredible is that? Don’t you feel forever indebted to him because he could kill you and isn’t? You worship God because he’s the big bad power who is now the big, bad power on your side and he’ll destroy your enemies because the Bible promised it…
It’s a perspective that only works if you think that might makes right. Even if you accept the belief that God created humanity, and even if you accept the belief that God has the power to destroy all that refuse to obey him, is that a compelling enough reason to worship him? Only if you think that power alone is worthy to be praised. Only if you think that goodness gets to be defined by the one with the most power.”
https://somaticstrength.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/the-might-makes-right-god/
“When she told me what was happening, I quickly corrected her. “If the cost of saving a marriage is destroying a woman, the cost is too high. God loves people more than he loves institutions.”
Jesus said what he said about divorce to protect women, not to imprison them. Divorce was a weapon foisted against women in the first century, not one they could use, and it almost always left them destitute if their family of origin couldn’t or wouldn’t step up…”
Let men realize that behavior has consequences, and that wives are supposed to be cherished, not used, not abused, and never treated as sexual playthings. If a man wants the benefit and companionship of a good woman, let him earn it, and re-earn it, and let him know it can be lost.”
http://www.garythomas.com/enough-enough/
“We asked for too much, and we didn’t say please.
But isn’t the problem the fact that you need oppressed people to prostrate themselves before you in order to grant them the same rights you currently enjoy? Isn’t the problem that you couldn’t rally around justice for those you may not know or like? Isn’t the problem the fact that you think that you can set a timetable on the recognition of someone’s humanity?
http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/11/29/you-dont-have-to-like-me-you-just-have-to-believe-im-a-human-being/
“For example, have you ever seen or visited a Holocaust memorial in the US? Many of us have. There are numerous Holocaust memorials in the US. Almost every major US city has one.
By comparison, have you ever seen or visited a memorial to the Transatlantic slave trade?
We Americans do better mourning Nazi sins than we do facing and grieving our own.
And this, I would argue, is the single biggest reason America has not been able to adequately address the racial problems plaguing our nation. Because there has never been a formal and culturally sustained moral reckoning with the American Holocausts we are always starting the conversation about race from two different moral locations.”
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2016/11/americas-holocaust.html
“She is the sacrificial lamb like Isaac was.
Only in this story, there is no God to save the day. There is no ram in the thicket for our nameless concubine. There is no angel like the ones in Lot’s story to sweep the family away from God’s hailstorm of judgment. God is silent. And justice is nowhere to be found…
In order for us to truly understand the depth of our need for God, we must take a long, hard look at the brokenness of our world, at the atrocities that surround us, some of which we may even implicitly take part in.”
Pondering Nomad 